California’s Gubernatorial Debate

If a debate happens and nobody pays any attention, does it really happen?

A full two months before the November election, California’s incumbent governor, Jerry Brown, and his challenger, Neel Kashkari, squared off for their one and only debate. It was a testy affair, and Kashkari desperately tried to create some heat for his campaign.

Yeah. About that.

Here are some screen grabs from some of California’s major newspapers. See if you can spot the theme:

Let’s start with the best home-page coverage, the San Jose Mercury News:

So far, so good. Now something a little less prominent but still heavily featured, the Sacramento Bee:

Okay. Still pretty good. There’s a picture there, and it seems to be the main article. Now, SFGate (the free version of the San Francisco Chronicle):

Uh, oh. According the Chronicle editors, you the reader are likely to care more about the price of a 49ers game, real estate in Berkeley, or how to successfully quit your job than you are the debate. Well, San Francisco is a hot bed of liberalism. Maybe it’s an aberration.

Here’s two conservative papers, though, the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press Enterprise.

There’s no mention of the debate at all here. None at all.

A monster-sized boulder is apparently more important than the gubernatorial debate to the readers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Finally, from the Los Angeles Times:

Yeah. No debate here either. (Although maybe the story about the grocery bags is a stealth attempt to get people to read about the debate. Brown did say during the debate that he would probably sign the bill banning plastic grocery bags in California.)

So, summing up. There was a debate last night between the two people running for governor in California. It’s the only debate that will happen between these two people. Only half of the state’s major newspapers think it was worth your attention. (Or, more accurately, think you care enough about it to feature it on their home-page.)

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the print editions of these newspapers. Maybe the debate is above the fold there. Most people don’t get their news from print editions any more, though.

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P.S. If you are wondering where all the adds are (the LA Times site has a lot of white space, for example), they aren’t being displayed because I use Ad Block Plus on my Chrome browser.